


Godspeed

by TinyBeautifulTales



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Feelings, Italiano | Italian, M/M, Religion, Sex, Uh.... they go back to Malta, Weddings, عربي | Arabic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26592067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyBeautifulTales/pseuds/TinyBeautifulTales
Summary: After the lab, they go back to Malta.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 28
Kudos: 211





	Godspeed

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is about Nicky and Joe. There are some flashbacks. There is DEFINITELY discussion of religion, and there is sex. If these things make you uncomfortable, maybe skip this one. 
> 
> I used Arabic and Italian, in the most basic, textbook sense. I know that they both speak dialects of the languages, BUT I thought it was easiest for everyone to just stick to textbook versions. I do speak Italian, but I do not speak Arabic -- if any of the translations/sentences are wrong, please let me know so that I can correct them. I do not mean any offense. 
> 
> I obviously do not own The Old Guard or any of the characters or even Malta. Sad. 
> 
> I wrote this fic, primarily, to Frank Ocean. Hence, the title.
> 
> If you would like to reblog a moodboard that I made for the fic, there is one at the following link! I would also love to hear your thoughts, opinions, and feelings on my blog! Plus, I am always down to write drabbles. I'm trying to play this cool and failing. ANYWAY, here is the link to the fic moodboard: 
> 
> https://pastandpresent.tumblr.com/post/630019213919141888

Nicky draws Joe into the slick part of his mouth with a hand on the back of his neck. Joe is easy like this: warm and damp from their shower, tracing gold over the outside of Nicky’s thighs where they settle around his waist. Nicky feels luminous between Joe’s hands, between the wall and the solidity of Joe’s chest, like he could fall to pieces under the ghost of Joe’s lips against his neck. 

“Cuore mio,” Nicky whispers. He can’t touch enough of Joe: his broad soldier’s shoulders, his solid chest, the nape of his strong neck. Nicky is breathless, still and always, at the low sounds Joe muffles into his skin when he trails the tips of his fingers down the front of Joe’s throat. His beard is rough under Nicky’s lips, but he smells like the figs they ate for lunch and the white wine they drank at the beach, and Nicky is helpless with the urge to taste. He opens his mouth against the underside of Joe’s throat, leaves open mouthed kisses on his neck that make them both clutch each other more tightly. To make room for Joe’s mouth behind his ear, Nicky buries his face in Joe’s shoulder, “Tu sei il mio sempre.” Nicky leaves the words there, pieces of stone to shore up Yusuf’s neck, that tower of Babel, that road to Jerusalem, the only religion Nicky has studied with the fervor of an acolyte for the last nine hundred years. 

Yusuf moves one of his hands onto the hinge of Nicky’s jaw, “Habibi, my impossible darling.” Whatever Nicky could’ve said in response is rendered silent by Joe’s kiss. They kiss open mouthed and wet, the careful progress of Joe’s hand down his chest making his heart skitter in his chest. Nicky arches into Joe’s touches; below his stomach, he can only squirm and plead, breathless with it. Joe is relentless. Biting Nicky’s lower lip, his knuckles moving along Nicky’s hipbone, so distracting it is nearly impossible to pull away. 

“Please, Joe,” Nicky winds his fingers into the back of Joe’s hair, tugs until Joe stops mouthing at his chin and his cheekbones, “Mio cuore.” 

Joe’s brown eyes are creased up in a smile when he looks at Nicky, “Habibi?” 

Nicky remembers the time he spent on his knees in churches, the way he’d begged until his legs went numb: Lord, make him mine, make him mine. The words had been more sacred to him than any of the Latin prayers. In those days, he hadn’t known how long the waiting would take. His heart had felt permanently swollen into his throat. Every time Joe had died, he’d imagined that his chance was gone, but he’d never walked away. Now, as he pulls Joe’s hair to direct his gaze down to his hand, down to where Joe is so close to touching him, Nicky thinks that all of the waiting has made him impatient. Being loved so well, so fervently is like being on fire. He could burn to quivering ashes with Joe and come back, just to do it again. 

“Andiamo,” Nicky can hear the tremor in his own voice. He wants it so badly. Nicky’s lips brush Joe’s forehead, “Andiamo, amore mio.” 

As the sun sets outside their windows, Joe takes Nicky into his hand. Nicky’s eyes fall closed as his head comes to rest against the mirror. They are not close enough, but Nicky knows that if he pulls, Joe’s hand will be uncomfortable, and the electricity racing up his spine, pooling in his stomach, tuned to the feeling of Joe’s lips moving down his neck and to his nipples, demands his attention. Nicky is moving against the desk. He feels weightless, a hot flash reaching its peak, his hands dragging red marks over Joe’s shoulders as he sinks onto his knees. 

Joe pauses only once. When Nicky opens his eyes, he is met by the sight of Joe’s teeth caught along his lower lip. He has his own cock in his hand under the desk, and Nicky is pierced by the sight of it. The sound he makes, low and wounded, makes Joe chuckle where his forehead is resting against Nicky’s thigh. 

“You are every one of my dreams,” Joe breathes, like the words were pulled from his throat, “You are every one of my best dreams.” 

Nicky touches his cheek, “Yusuf.”

“Nicolo, as long as I live, I will dream of you,” Joe smiles, easy and free, the sunset off the Mediterranean turning his skin burnished gold. 

It is simple, really. This man, this home they’ve built, their lives, this country where they have married countless times. Nicky slides off the edge of the counter to get closer to Joe. He is graceless, overwhelmed, flushed and dizzy with the heat of Joe’s skin as he settles into his lap. Joe keeps smiling. His big hands settle over Nicky’s hips, pinch playfully at his lovehandles. Being this close to Joe still sets something burning steadily in his gut, in the tips of his fingers. The interested jut of Joe’s cock nudges Nicky’s stomach as he settles down, and Nicky just closes his eyes, tries to stop the seizing in his core that begs for Joe, for Joe’s body. When he can breathe again, Nicky grins, breathless, as he wraps his arms around Joe’s neck, “Tu sei il mio sogno sempre.” He does not know if he means it as a vow or an oath or the guiding star of his life, but he knows that Joe shivers in his arms, makes a crooning sound into their kisses. Joe is the most important thing Nicky has ever held. 

“You are my heart,” Joe responds. He moves Nicky’s hair back behind his ears, “You are my constant heart, habibi.” 

Nicky can wait no longer. He was fingered earlier, on the kitchen counter. The goosebumps on his chest, on his hips, spreading down his thighs, make everything feel acute, urgent, like if he can’t have Joe at this moment, he will burn up. Joe knows. Instinct makes Joe stroke his thumb over Nicky’s throat, his dark eyes focused only on Nicky’s fluttering lashes, his wandering hands. Joe gasps as Nicky situates his cock, as he begins to move his hips. It is always in this sensation that Nicky feels freeist. With Joe’s hand white knuckled on his thigh and his neck, Joe’s lips moving over his throat so fervently he could be praying, Nicky feels seen, worshipped, connected. 

Joe is strong enough to heft Nicky forward on his cock until their lips are touching. They are not kissing; instead, they breathe each other’s air, silent and still. It’s transubstantiation, it’s communion, it’s nine hundred years of their fervent love made physical. In Malta, Nicky is never rushed through his exploration of Joe’s face when he is inside of him: his flushed cheeks, his dark eyes, his bitten lips, the furrows on his forehead as he allows Nicky to touch him without moving. The feelings in his chest have names, Nicky knows, but he does not want to ruin them by labeling them. Words are complicated. Joe, the way he feels about Joe, the way he loves Joe, there are no words for that in any language. It is tenderness enough to make him wish to live another nine hundred years, just to continue being handled with such reverence. Nicky puts both of his hands on Joe’s face.

“You are the most beautiful when you are inside of me,” Nicky brushes their noses together, too full of everything to say anything more.

Nudging forward enough to let Nicky know that he will begin moving, Joe bites at Nicky’s lower lip, “You are the most beautiful when I am inside of you.” 

Joe makes love to him like he has never died before, like he has never waited over Nicky’s dead body with a gun or an axe. They are on the floor of their bathroom, in front of the tub, and Joe glows in the moonlight. His strong, golden arms hold Nicky to his chest, caress his sides up and down, maneuver him until all Nicky can do is bare his throat and repeat, “Madre di dio” with Joe’s teeth in his neck. Nicky winds his hands into Joe’s hair and arches his back the way that makes Joe muffle a, “Yasua” into his skin and work his hips faster. They are free. They are not afraid. They are in love. 

*** 

Andy gives Nicky tickets to Malta the week after they have spoken to Copley and exiled Booker. She is unusually somber when she walks into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. Nicky can read the careful way she holds her shoulders, like she is relearning the constant pain of mortality, and the bags under her eyes that speak of the sleep she hasn’t been getting. He has been praying for her in the quiet moments, because it is comforting. On his knees, he settles into praying as easily as he breathes. The Latin tastes like Genoa, sounds like the sea sighing against the shore, is as deep in his bones as his mother’s voice or Joe’s whispered confessions. He lives divinity every day, just by being with his family, but he will not tell Andy that he has prayed for her. Silent, the morning’s paper settled beside his own coffee, Nicky allows her the pretence of coffee, of another day just like all of the others that she has lived. 

He is touching the ring he wears at his throat, the first ring Joe ever gave him, when Andy slides into the chair opposite him. Her breathing fills the silence as she stares down into her coffee cup. Nicky imagines her remembering when she was young, timing her heartbeat to the filling of sails and the poses they were all taught as young warriors. She is not fragile, because Andromache has never been anything close to breakable, but he can see her being careful with herself and her shoulder. 

Nicky is about to offer her breakfast, a mango that Joe bought at a farmer’s market, when Andy slides the pieces of paper across the table. 

“I have something for you,” Andy’s lips quirk up into a half smile. 

Nicky remembers saying the same thing to her when he’d handed her the baklava that Joe found in Turkey. He’d kissed the syrupy, flaky sweetness off of Joe’s lips in the hotel they were staying in, but they’d had another piece wrapped up so carefully, kept it like precious cargo when they were traveling to meet Andy and Booker. Andy’s quick smile, her eagerness for all baklava, had made it worth it. Now, brows furrowed, Nicky picks up the pieces of paper from the middle of the table. The familiar face of a plane ticket stares back at him. He is confused, eyebrows climbing further up his forehead, until he sees the airport code: MLA. 

Andy is smiling softly when Nicky looks up, a question still crinkling up his brow, “Take him home, Nicky.” She doesn’t waver when she says, “I don’t think he’s convinced himself that you’re okay yet.” 

Hands shaking slightly, Nicky nods. Neither of them had been able to face down the point blank shot that Nicky had taken to the back of his head. He still feels the ghost of that gun in his mouth, the moment he’d known, unequivocally, what was about to happen. As always, his final thought tasted like Joe’s skin, felt like the scratch of his beard against Nicky’s thighs, sounded like Joe’s laugh when he was in the ocean or driving a car too quickly in Italy. He looks down at the tickets once before he speaks, “We can’t leave you.” 

Andy’s laugh is sleep worn, rusty, “I’ll be fine.” 

Nicky does not want Nile and Andy left here to fend for themselves, “Andy--” 

“Ferma,” Andy leans forward, her coffee cup settled on the table while she stares unwaveringly into Nicky’s eyes, “We’ll be fine. I’ll teach Nile more Russian.” 

“Andromache,” Nicky shakes his head, “You are impossible,” but he is chuckling. Something in his chest has opened for the way that Joe will smile when he sees the tickets, for the way that Andy reaches across the table to touch his hand. 

“You deserve to rest,” Andy sips her coffee, “When you come back, we get back to work. It’s only fair to give Copley a head start.” She shrugs before tugging the newspaper to her side of the table, “The world can’t go entirely to shit in five days, can it?” 

Nicky does not know that he has an answer for that question. He rises from the table, the tickets in his hand, and presses a kiss to the crown of Andy’s head. Her shoulder, where it was stitched, still bears a scar and some redness. Nicky tries not to dwell on that. His chest feels full to the brim. Voice wavering, Nicky whispers, “Grazie mille, la mia guerrera.” 

Andy shoo’s him out of the kitchen with a smile on her face that does not reach her eyes. She is focused, already, on the next thing. Nicky envies her easy concentration, her poise, her fearlessness. He drifts down the hallway, into the room that he and Joe have claimed as their own. When Joe returns from the museum with Nile, they will pack. Nicky thinks longingly of the way that Joe will kiss his hands, his forehead, his lips, when he sees that they are going to Malta. It is the place nearest to the center of where they are both from. Nicky tries not to be biased, but Joe glows in the Mediterranean: his skin darkens, his curls tumble into his umber eyes, he is always touching Nicky. They will go home, Nicky thinks, and they will relearn how to breathe more easily. 

***

Their home in Malta was a gift. WWI had been over, and Nicky had been tired down to his bones. The weight of all of that death, the stink of the trenches, the sight of Joe’s side blown open made him physically ill to remember. The world was no longer recognizable. Darkness was taking over. For a long time, Nicky only wanted the light. Joe held his hand through Paris, Milan, Athens, Crete, always places where they walked proudly in the sun. During this time, while Nicky thought obsessively of the dark, Joe shone more brightly than ever. His artist’s hands were never far from Nicky’s skin, and his slow smile, like a sunrise, made Nicky feel like he was a human person, instead of a ghost haunting history. With their hands linked, Joe’s bashful smiles as Nicky moved curls off of his forehead, they’d done tourist things again: museums, ruins, gardens, grand palaces, road trips. 

Nicky hadn’t had to ask to spend the summer in Italy. Joe booked them a flight without saying a single word. He’d put the tickets on the side table in their safehouse and kissed Nicky’s forehead with an, “I will go sketch, my love.” Nicky remembers the way his hands had trembled around those tickets, and the baklava he made that night, humming to himself in the kitchen, while Joe drew in a white linen shirt in the garden. The way Joe had kissed him with honey on his mouth, how he’d tasted of cinnamon and the promise of Italy. He was Nicky’s beating heart that summer. When they got to Italy, Milan was too loud, so they took off. Joe looked so relaxed behind the wheel of a beautiful car, his tanned forearms catching the light. Nicky remembers curling in the front seat, content. With the sun in his hair and Joe’s hand on the nape of his neck, Joe’s strong thigh under his own palm, he’d closed his eyes, boneless. Nothing relaxed him quite like being in Italy. He felt less visible, felt somehow safer when other people looked and spoke like him. Italy made his heart feel too big in his chest. Home, his old soul whispered to the olive trees and the piazzas, we are home. Nicky slept and dreamt of Tuscany, of the way olive oil shined against Joe’s skin, of the feeling of making love with the windows open, sitting astride Joe’s hips in the tub and racing water rivulets down his chest with his tongue. 

“Nicky, we are here.” 

Half asleep, the imprint of the car’s leather seat on his cheek, Nicky woke up to the shadow of Santa Maria Delle Vigne. He had seen this basilica many times, in many forms. All of those ways paled to seeing this church with Joe’s hand on the back of his neck. 

Nicky’s voice had sounded thick. He did not cry often, but he remembered the threat of tears in his throat as he looked at Joe’s furrowed forehead, his hesitant smile, “Mio amore sempre.” 

Joe’s tone was so soft, “Andiamo?” 

Nicky couldn’t speak. Words failed beneath the roaring of his heart in his ears. Nicky had been petrified that Genoa, a piece of his heart, would’ve been irreparably altered by a clumsy, bloody surgeon named war. Joe’s fingers working against the back of his neck, Nicky closed his eyes and breathed. Still, the salt on the air, the whisper of the ocean, the promise of fresh focaccia, incense under all of it. Nicky tucked those comforts into his heart. When his pulse finally stopped thundering in his ears and in his hands, they’d gotten out of the car together. 

Joe was careful with him: he opened the door to the church before giving Nicky space. Nicky had tried to breathe through the feelings crowding his chest; they’d threatened to bowl him over before he’d even blessed himself with holy water, but then he’d seen the caramel nape of Joe’s neck bent to his folded hands, his curls falling into his eyes as he’d prayed in a pew. His chest felt lighter knowing that Joe was nearby. 

For the next hour, Nicky wandered the nave and the pulpit. Divinity lived in him, breathed in his relationship with Joe, but the church was the first place Nicky had ever felt like he had a purpose or a home. This church, specifically, was almost as old as they were. Its humble bones no longer showed: paintings adorned the golden ceiling and the naves boasted new sculptures of the Madonna. Nicky drifted as silently as possible around the church while his mind wandered back to his youth, back to the passionate man who’d believed so fervently in his own inherent goodness that he’d become a soldier in what he’d thought was the worst war he’d ever see. 

Wars were different now: bloodier, automated, louder, faster. It was only when Nicky was staring unseeingly at the lit candle offerings, eyes on nothing and everything, that he’d realized how much of WWI he’d taken into his body. His tense shoulders, his clenched jaw, the strain in his neck everyday, all of those things were remnants of the war that they’d fought. Nicky carried fear with him like a weight around his ankle. Even when he was beneath Joe or in the ocean, he felt a shadow flicker of fear breathing down his neck. They’d all seen horrible things together, but the reality of Joe bleeding out slowly, his hand cradled weakly to Nicky’s cheek, his final, silent, “Cuore mio” cut Nicky in a place that he’d guarded as carefully as possible. There was nothing in his future if Joe was not beside him. Nicky was eight hundred years old; still, he did not know how to begin to put that sharp, acute fear down. 

In the privacy of the darkened church, Nicky bent down shakily to grab a candle. He is a sharpshooter, a swordsman, but the match wavered in his fingers, quivered as the flame gasped into being. Hardly daring to breathe, Nicky touched the flame to the top of the candle. A white candle burned gold. Nicky’s heart thundered in his ears as he set the candle off to the side of the candle holders. He did not know what other people prayed for, what other people had been offered thoughts and dreams here, but he closed his eyes and kneeled in front of the choir of candles. To God, Nicky gave his anxiety, his fear, the part of his heart that was permanently afraid of Joe leaving before Nicky could tell him how much he loved him. God would not begrudge his decision to take the long way to this decision or this place, Nicky remembers thinking. He’d pressed his forehead to his hands and exhaled all of his fear into the church. His chest could no longer hold all of it. When he felt stronger, like he could unclench his jaw after ten years of anxiety, Nicky vowed fervently to love Joe for as long as he was gifted with. In those days, he hadn’t been sure of the reasons for their long lives, but he’d been sure of Joe. He’d been sure that Joe’s tenderness, Joe’s love was reason enough to live forever. 

When Nicky rose on shaky legs, he turned and found Joe’s brown eyes on his face, on the set of his mouth. He was leant against a pillar in the dark, but he was the brightest thing that Nicky had ever seen. Nicky wanted everything with this man. Joe knew, “Amore, you are glowing,” he whispered as his strong, tanned hands came up to cradle Nicky’s face.

Nicky didn't say anything. Bold, lightened in a way he hadn’t been in a long time, Nicky closed the space between them to catch Joe’s smiling mouth in a kiss. It was chaste, just the brushing of lips, but Joe still curled a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck and touched his throat with a thumb. Everything in the entire world became silent for the way that Joe held him. 

Lacing their fingers together on his own face, Nicky responded in a voice that trembled, “There aren’t words in any language that describe how I feel when I am with you.” 

Joe pressed their noses together. That moment, in Genoa with Joe, had taken his breath away. Nicky had felt like the world was opening again, like the entire universe had conspired to put them together all of those years ago. Nicky had closed his eyes. He was finally safe. 

“I would see you radiant always,” Joe did not have to say that he’d brought Nicky here because he was worried, because Nicky could hear the words behind what he said. His thumb worked over the back of Nicky’s hand as he said, “You are my heart, Nicolo.” 

Nicky made a low, wanting sound as Joe’s lips moved across his forehead, onto his closed eyes, his cheekbones, down the bridge of his nose. Joe was an ache in the center of his chest, a heaviness in his stomach, and Nicky pulled him in by the back of his hair to another kiss, open-mouthed and slick. 

“Come away with me, caro mio,” Joe whispered, when they parted. He was talking quickly, “I have found a quiet place for us. There is a garden, amore mio, and a library. It is all yours, if you want it.” 

The decision was easy, really. 

***

Nicky wakes up to the sound of Joe humming to himself in the kitchen. In the mornings, he hums old songs: folk songs, lullabies, the melodies he would’ve grown up listening to. The songs are deeply embedded in Nicky’s memories. Their first night together, Joe’s voice slipping through the words of a Persian lullaby, Nicky fell asleep to the melody whispering against the back of his neck. When Booker joined them, Joe had been humming fight songs under his breath. He probably hadn’t even known he was doing it. If Nicky kisses him just right, on the side of his mouth, Joe will hum low in the back of his throat, something part growl, part love song. Now, as he presses their coffee for the morning, the smell of oranges in the air, Nicky hears an old Neapolitan melody: Quanne nasciette ie nasciette a mare, nasciette fra li Turche e fra li More. 

This lullaby, specifically, makes Nicky think of his own mother. She is a wisp of memory now: just her piercing, dark eyes, and the curve of her lower lip as she’d made him promise to stay in the yard while she cooked dinner over a fire. Her voice was like gossamer pulled across a dark window, like the waves breaking over sand, and when she’d sung lullabies, Nicky had never known if he was supposed to fall asleep or stay awake to hear her for just a moment longer. Italian women, his mom, never sung the songs to put them to sleep. She’d cast protection over them, over the house; her singing had been a blessing against illness and misfortune. 

Nicky rises from the bed with his mother’s voice underpinning Joe’s. Sleep fog dissipates slowly as he stands in the bedroom. Their curtains billow with the wind off of the ocean, and the sun turns everything it touches gold. Malta feels like the best dream Nicky has ever had, like they could be two normal men who are in love and living in this home. He follows the sound of Joe’s low voice and the smell of coffee to their garden. Nicky feels a sudden, fierce pang of longing when he sees the flowers that have bloomed in their absence: heady pinks and brilliant yellows, all of their stems stretched toward the sun. The trees cast uneven shadows over the table where Joe is seated in a chair with his back to their home. It is the most beautiful place that Nicky has ever been, still and always. In the center of this paradise, Joe has abandoned his mug of coffee for his sketchbook. His broad shoulders fill out a white shirt, and Nicky knows that he will have slipped into a pair of linen pants. He is beautiful, bold, strong, could have Nicky across the table, if he wanted it. 

Nicky crosses the garden to stand behind Joe. Without preamble, he slips his arms around Joe’s shoulders, presses his open mouth to the nape of Joe’s strong neck. 

Joe’s chuckle rumbles under Nicky’s big palms, “Buongiorno, la mia musa.”

They slept together all night, Joe’s leg between his, and Nicky still missed him. He can’t stop mouthing at the hinge of Joe’s jaw, smelling his hair. There is something in his chest that Joe’s teeth are fiercely lodged in, “Buongiorno.” 

A warm palm finds the nape of Nicky’s neck. That same sudden, fierce, hungry thing rears in his chest as he goes liquid for Joe’s touch. The entire world is silent as Joe turns his head to look at Nicky. Voice lower than the waves, Joe whispers, “Vieni qua, amore mio.” 

The chairs that they bought were not meant for two people. Still, Nicky climbs into Joe’s lap; coltish, his long legs bent awkwardly until Joe scoots forward a bit, just enough for him to cross his legs behind his back. Nicky tries not to shiver at the big hands on his hips or the whisper of Joe’s nose along his collarbone. It could be Malta, but it is really just Joe’s undivided attention, the weight of nine hundred years of love between them. Breathing out, willing the hungry thing in his chest to calm down, Nicky puts his hands on Joe’s cheeks, the hinges of his jaw. 

Joe’s voice does not waver when he says, “You scared me in London.” He does not blink, does not look away. 

There it is, Nicky thinks. An instant, sudden, and gone again with the breeze, if not for the weight of Joe’s eyes on his face, if not for the feeling of Joe’s fingers wound too tightly in the back of his shirt. Nine hundred years of love feels like this, sometimes, desperate and intense, so big Nicky thinks he can’t possibly carry all of it. His own hands are soft on Joe’s face. Where Joe leaves scorch marks, Nicky tries to burn more steadily. His heart wouldn’t last, if he always felt so fiercely, so protectively. Half of the world would be wiped out for the way that they deal with Joe. Looking into Joe’s wide, dark eyes, Nicky remembers when his side was blown open in WWI. Death is always urgent, always terrifying, always Nicky frantically combing through his life with Joe to remember every little thing in case it is the last time. 

Nicky’s palm covers Joe’s entire cheek. Everything that he wants to say crowds his throat. How do you apologize to the love of every one of your lives for almost dying? It is impossible, Nicky realizes. He can repent with his hips, with his lips, with his eyes, with his entire life, but Joe would not want that, and Nicky thinks about standing in Santa Maria Delle Vigne. At some point, the only thing either of them can do is love each other all the more fiercely for their impossible lives. 

“Non posso vivere senza il mio cuore,” Joe turns until he can kiss the center of Nicky’s palm. His hands release Nicky’s shirt to settle against his bare skin. 

Nicky shivers, open mouthed and wanting as he presses his forehead to Joe’s, “You are my home and all of my dreams, Yusuf.” Joe makes a sound in the back of his throat, pressing Nicky forward with the hands he has on his back. They are bound up together. Nicky bites Joe’s lower lip, “You are my heaven, habibi. Only you.” 

“You cannot go without me, Nicky,” Joe’s mouth moves against his. The words taste like their kisses. 

Nicky stops Joe’s voice in the only way he can think of. He kneels on either side of Joe’s legs, slotting their mouths together into a kiss that tastes faintly of coffee and orange. Joe is pliant with his nails digging into Nicky’s shoulder blades, his tongue in Nicky’s mouth. They kiss slick and soft, something gentle against the counterpoint of their thunderous hearts. Nicky can feel Joe against his front, and his entire body rises to the tenor of Joe’s moans when he tugs at Joe’s curls to tilt his head back. His swollen mouth, his closed eyes, his long eyelashes casting shadows against his cheeks, all of him takes Nicky’s breath away. 

“My sweetest heart,” Nicky whispers, his lips against Joe’s chin, then his neck, “I will be with you always.” 

Joe’s hands find his hips. Settle there. 

“I will be always in your arms at night,” Nicky promises the sensitive spot behind Joe’s ear, “We are safe, tesoro mio. Here, we are safe.” 

“You are my heart, Nicolo.” 

Nine hundred years of love feels like this too: Joe shaking through a single, angry sob in his arms while Nicky breathes la mia anima into his strong neck, over and over. Nicky knows that apologizing or promising not to do it again would be futile. Joe does not like falsities. They have both watched words gain and lose meaning. Actions have never lost their power. Without saying anything more, Nicky twines himself more tightly around Joe: locking his legs around Joe’s back, arms unbreakable around his neck, his face buried in Joe’s shoulder. Joe responds in kind. If they were human, his fingers would leave bruises on Nicky’s sides, but they are not, and he is warm, sweet, smells like coffee and the charcoal he has smudged on his fingertips from drawing. Nicky exhales heavily into Joe’s neck as one of his hands come up to cradle the back of Nicky’s head, right over where the bullet exited. He is shivering, he finds, shaking apart under Joe’s terrified attention. It is a human urge that he has not been able to move past, even with nine hundred years, that makes him whisper, “Saminhi, hayati.” 

*** 

Later that day, when the sun is burning in the sky, they clasp hands and go to the market. Nicky’s heart threatens to burst from his chest when Joe stops him in the kitchen of their home. He grins, lopsided and flushed along his cheeks from the sun, as he unhooks the wedding ring that Nicky wears habitually around his neck. Even now, in this current world, they are still careful with when they wear their wedding rings. Men are still beaten and killed for loving each other publicly. Brave, golden, happy Joe takes their first wedding band off of the chain around Nicky’s neck before slipping it onto his ring finger. Nicky shakes his head. 

“Yusuf,” his voice comes out fond and sweet. 

Linking their fingers together, tugging Nicky out of the front door, Joe says, “There is no more beautiful sight than my husband in his wedding ring.” 

Nicky flushes. 

They walk to the market with their hands linked between them. Joe carries their bags and cash, stashed in his pockets. Like this, haloed by the sun, his curls longer against his neck, arms bare and strong in a short sleeved shirt, Nicky can do nothing but stare, part adoration, part love, part the low simmer of arousal he always feels for Joe. Their time spent together like this, aimless and normal, settles something in both of them. Nicky always feels himself falling more deeply in love. Impossible to stop, Nicky veers to the side of the road, pulling them off the main street, seeking quiet and some privacy. Joe only smiles and kisses the back of his hand. They find a quiet corner between two apartment buildings where Nicky, smiling, presses Joe’s hands back into the building so he cannot touch. 

Joe tips his head back, a husky laugh the only indication that he knows what Nicky is up to. 

At first, Nicky is just teasing Joe for the way that he strains forward, making impatient sounds in the back of his throat. Joe makes Nicky’s heart careen -- his fluttering eyelashes, the slope of his chest revealed by his white shirt, the way he does not look away from Nicky’s mouth when he wants to kiss him. Electricity hums between them in the warm air. It is heady to know that Joe could get out if he wanted to, but that he plays for Nicky’s sake, lets himself be teased into something burning brightly. 

Nicky can only taunt him for so long before Joe is flipping them, his hands on Nicky’s hips, Nicky’s hands in his hair. Joe kisses like he wants to devour, like he will have Nicky against this wall. He is demanding, a hand on Nicky’s chin to tilt him exactly where he wants him, a leg between Nicky’s that keeps him still and hot. Nicky can’t breathe. Joe bites his lower lip, and Nicky grabs a fistful of his hair. Whispering Santa Maria, madre di dio into their kisses, Joe gentles their touches. They are touching mouths, once, twice, again, slow and open mouthed. Nicky’s head would hit the wall, if not for Joe’s hand on the nape of his neck. They kiss, sweet after the burn, until Nicky knows that his mouth and chin are red from Joe’s beard. He carries Joe’s mark on his face, carries Joe’s ring on his finger. Joe’s eyes open slowly until he is staring at Nicky with dark eyes blown wide, his chest heaving. Nicky presses a palm flat to Joe’s thundering heart: Joe’s warrior heart, his loving heart, his gentle, fierce heart. They rest their heads together, breathing, before they start back towards the market. 

The market is bustling: people everywhere, a mixture of Mediterranean languages and dialects, fresh fruit that Nicky can already taste in a tart or a jam. They drift without direction through the stalls.The sky is so blue that Nicky keeps tilting his head back, just to gaze at it and marvel. People pass beside them without second glances. Gratitude surges in Nicky’s chest as he turns to look at Joe. They are so lucky. They keep walking until Joe pulls him closer to fresh figs, his eyes wide as the farmer offers him a sample. Joe smiles so widely that the farmer can do nothing but smile back at Nicky, hiding slightly behind Joe’s shoulder so they take up less space in front of the table. Nicky smiles too. He knows how difficult it is to resist Joe’s liquid eyes and his unabashedly happy smile. 

Joe bites into the fig with his eyes closed. A rivulet of juice carves a path down his wrist that Nicky imagines following with his mouth. He can almost taste the fig; here, where they are grown, they always taste better. Nicky nudges his lips against the nape of Joe’s neck. Sometimes, when Joe gets very focused on food, he will not share. 

Chuckling, Joe’s fingers hold the fig up so that Nicky can sink his teeth into the other half. It is one of their favorite foods, and one of the foods that Nicky craves most acutely when they are away from the Mediterranean for a long time. The fig is sweet, thick, blooms on his tongue. Nicky would be embarrassed by the sounds he makes, if it were not for Joe’s gentle smile. They do not need to say it out loud. Joe turns back to the farmer for a basket of figs. 

After the figs, they find jewel-bright raspberries and fragrant, heavy cantaloupe. Nicky ends up with a bundle of basil in the bag and some prosciutto. In his mind’s eye, the cantaloupe is already wrapped in the salty, tender prosciutto. Nicky will eat it leaning over the counter in the kitchen, breathless with hunger. Joe will find him with his eyes closed, sighing happily as he licks juice from his fingers. For Nicky, the almost too sweet smell of the melon with the impossible silkiness of the prosciutto is part of this place for him. Joe kissing him to share the taste is part of this place too, something impossibly indulgent for their usual lives. 

They try olive oil on fresh, warm focaccia. Nicky actively swallows down the urge to moan as Joe caresses his hip, watching his mouth. As they drift away from the olive oil, back to holding hands, Joe bites his shoulder lightly. Because of the crowd, they have an excuse to press up together, Joe’s strong front snug to his back. Nicky turns to look at him with an eyebrow raised; it is a bad attempt at appearing unruffled. He knows that his cheeks are flushed as he looks between Joe’s eyes and his mouth. 

Joe leaves a lingering kiss on the nape of his neck, “I have never seen anyone more beautiful.” 

Nicky begs the weightless, concentrated pinpricks of arousal to quiet in his lower stomach. His breath hitches as Joe’s hand moves to his stomach to press him back. Nicky can feel him. 

“Ferma,” Nicky’s voice comes out tremulous as they continue shuffling along with the crowd, “Amore.” 

“Hayati,” Joe’s voice is smoke in his ear, the shiver up his spine, “you are distracting me.” 

Nicky places his hand over Joe’s on his stomach, “Yusuf.” He is trying to be firm, but his heart is skipping. Even bantering like this makes something tighten in Nicky’s gut. Everything in him is pitched to the sound of Joe’s heartbeat, his breathing, his small kiss to the back of Nicky’s neck as he steps back. It is impossible to not feel like an exposed wire left sparking, “My heart.” 

“Yes, my love?” Joe’s smile is brighter than a clear night sky. 

Helpless, breathless, Nicky huffs out a laugh. Things are always like this in Malta, easy and sweet, but he wonders if they would cherish these moments as closely if everything was always so relaxed. Nicky remembers the way that Joe’s voice had sounded when he said, “Oh, that time in Malta,” like wistfulness and love and pain were bound too tightly for him to untangle them. Nicky understands that all too well. They are untouchable here, and for the moment, Nicky lets that sink in and release him from his anxiety. 

*** 

Because of the dark bags that permanently live under Nicky’s eyes, Joe insisted that they go to bed early. Their white sheets and their nest of pillows had been enough for Nicky to crawl into bed without argument. His body had gone liquid against the mattress before Joe had even finished humming a song in Arabic. Today, Joe wakes him with kisses smudged to his shoulder and the tense slope of his neck. They are the muscles that Nicky always rests his rifle on. When they are not working, it always takes a couple of days for the ghost of pain to leave. His human body remembers the ache too well for his immortal body to write over it. 

“Amore mio,” Joe murmurs into the fluffy ends of Nicky’s hair, “Let’s go swimming.” 

Nicky turns his face into the pillow to hide his smile. Going swimming devolves, always, into Joe getting handsy far enough from people that they can’t see but close enough that they could hear, if they wanted to. Wet, suntanned, sea-scented Joe is too much for Nicky to resist in any of his lifetimes. They tumble out of bed together; Joe, because he is warm and focused, because he knows Nicky, is already in blue swim trunks that come to above the muscular middles of his thighs. It is like being drunk, sometimes. The way he wants Joe constantly. 

Joe leaves Nicky to brush his teeth and get ready while he packs a bag for them to take. The swimming briefs live in a drawer in their closet. Nicky can’t help smiling as he looks at the mess of swimwear they’ve acquired throughout the years. A clothing historian would get lost here, he thinks to himself. There are swim shorts and dresses, the wet suits that Andy favors for when she swims, and the smaller swimsuits that Booker can occasionally be coaxed onto the beach in. When they are on missions, they don’t have time for swimming so the suits don’t leave Malta. Here, Nicky puts a pair of black briefs on before turning to check out how they fit in the mirror. On missions, Nicky prioritizes comfort and stealth. He wears dark colors in an attempt to blend into the shadows. Today, Nicky will wear these black briefs because he knows that Joe likes them. They are perhaps a bit too tight, squeezing in a way that makes his thighs look like they are more voluptuous than they are, sitting low over the top of his bum. Nicky touches his lower stomach and hips, briefly. They are perfect. 

The sun washes down on them as they wander to the beach closest to their home. A slight breeze ruffles Joe’s curls, sends both of their button downs swirling. The weather, the sun even, seems to be warning that fall is creeping ever closer here on the island. They do not think about it -- as soon as they get to the beach, Nicky is sighing in pleasure. If he could always walk on sun-warmed sand, he would. Following the uneven hills of water-shaped land, they find a quiet place, a bit away from the locals already splashing around. Joe unrolls their blanket before meeting Nicky’s eyes. 

His fingers move slowly, teasingly, down his chest as he unbuttons his shirt. White fabric falls away to reveal his pectoral muscles and the flat, caramel plane of his stomach, just a hint of hair falling away below the waistband. Even his sharp jawline makes Nicky feel prickles of heat in his chest. Joe is almost carved of marble, but he is better than any statue, because when Nicky bites his inner biceps or noses up into his hair, Joe sighs with pleasure, entirely at the mercy of their love. He is challenging Nicky, standing with his hands on his hips as he watches the thoughts move through Nicky’s head. 

Nicky does not know if it is the sun or Joe, but his fingers shake as he attempts to take his own shirt off too. Going slowly seems silly when Joe comes to help him. Hooking his fingers in the linen pants that Nicky put on, Joe pulls them off his hips and down his legs. It would be foolish to be bashful after nine hundred years with someone, Nicky tells himself. They do not swim often, though, and Joe is looking at him so intensely, focused so acutely on his stomach and his hips. 

“Madre di dio.” 

“See something you like?” Nicky whispers. Because they are in Malta, he loops his arms around Joe’s neck. There is no space between them. Just the press of his chest against Joe’s, and Joe’s hands indecently low on his back. 

Joe’s eyes crinkle in a laugh, “Always,” he says, as he tilts his forehead to Nicky’s. 

Feeling loved and safe, Nicky slips out of Joe’s arms. He begins to walk towards the welcoming, calming sea. His hips sway more than strictly necessary, and when he looks over his shoulder, Joe is staring directly at his thighs. Laughing, something made entirely of light and air in his chest, Nicky meets Joe’s eyes, “You know, Mr. Al-Kaysani… it is not polite to stare.” 

There is a brief moment of time, frozen, as Joe shakes his head fondly. He cannot stop smiling. This version of his husband, carefree, in love, fixated on him, is one of Nicky’s favorites. If it was in his power, they would always be like this. When Joe speaks, he has begun to walk towards Nicky where the water is lapping at his ankles, “It’s not polite to tease either, Mr. Al-Kaysani.” 

Together, racing, they swim out into water that is up to their necks. The Mediterranean is warm from the long months of summer, and the waves are like gently rolling hills. They both learned to swim in their youth. Nicky’s shoulders broadened when his father taught him to work the nets, finally, and let him get into the water to unhook fish and branches from their catches. He’d loved it. Joe was taught to swim when he became a soldier. They did not know if the boats would make it, if they would capsize or need to swim to land after the boats were wrecked. This same sea, this same water, supported both of them. This water is so giving, Nicky thinks. He would stay forever, warm, eyes closed, legs wrapped around Joe’s waist, home. Joe would too, he knows. His fierce warrior husband is a different person in the water: less restrained, gentler, soothed. 

Nicky closes his eyes, arms around Joe’s neck, as Joe begins to move his thumbs back and forth over Nicky’s back. Something a lot like love is rising in his throat, threatening to stop his breathing. The Mediterranean, older than they are, just as constant, has watched them silently for hundreds of years. This place, this sea, is the one that would’ve connected them before the Crusades, and it is the sea they have made a home on. For centuries, this sea has been the beating heart of both of their homelands. They have spoken about if they die, and come to the conclusion that they both want to return here, to this water and their lives, together. Booker will bring them back here or Nile; at first, they’d both wanted Andy or Quynh to return them. Now, with his heart in his throat, Nicky had sat down to ask Andy what she wanted when she passed. Their warrior queen, their impenetrable, steel-booted boss, had only said, “Take me home, okay?” To counter all of his thoughts of death, Nicky listens to the steady drumbeat of Joe’s heart while his fingers move idly over his chest. The words are building in his throat. Joe has proposed in their bed, on a plane, after Nicky nailed a particularly difficult shot once; occasionally, Joe has gone the extravagant route. This feeling burrows in Nicky’s chest. Here, their home, it is perfect. Selfishly, Nicky wants to hear Joe’s voice waver as he recites another set of vows that he will write in careful calligraphy in the sketch book he reserves for their weddings. Honestly, Nicky wants the reassurance that they are the same after everything that has happened with Andy and the lab. 

“Yusuf,” he does not lift his head, because Joe has nosed into the top of his hair. Nicky can feel him breathing, “will you marry me?” 

Joe’s hands tighten on his back, “Right now?” 

When Joe’s voice goes soft and low, Nicky has to look at his face. Although he doesn’t want to, Nicky lifts his head. Joe’s eyebrows are furrowed in surprise, and his lips are parted slightly. Behind him, sun reflects off of the water into a halo around his dark curls. Nicky’s heart is the exact size and shape of Joe’s broadening smile. 

“You will kill me,” Joe’s voice is part laugh, part fond, “Looking like that while you ask me to marry you. Cuore mio,” Joe’s hands lock under his bum to lift him to kissing height, “I will marry you every day until the day we are gone.” 

Nicky tilts his head back in a laugh. He feels like a lightbulb lives under his skin, illuminating them and everything around them. To soothe Joe, to watch the way his eyes fall closed, Nicky runs both of his hands through his hair. His entire body arches into Joe’s, “I don’t think Andy would like that.” 

Joe runs his nose up the side of his Nicky’s face until he is whispering into the skin under Nicky’s ear, “You are my home, my heart, my religion.”

They are Joe’s vows, undoubtedly. Nicky shivers. He should’ve known that Joe wouldn’t wait for a church. To let Joe know that he is listening, Nicky kisses his cheek, a hand on the back of his neck. There is a place in his chest that burns for Joe, always. Listening to Joe recite vows in the same low, gentle voice that he has always used turns that place molten. 

“There is not a word in any language that expresses how I feel about you,” Joe kisses his neck, “so we say love, but I mean that you are the center around which I orbit, Nicolo. You are the reason I fight, the reason I pray, the other half of my whole.” 

Nicky holds him more tightly. 

“I do not know what more God can offer me, when I have experienced centuries of heaven on Earth with you,” Joe whispers. 

There is a split second of silence as the waves crest and break near the shore. Nicky does not wait any longer than that. Desperate, something half-way broken and soft in his throat, Nicky meets Joe’s mouth with all of the love that he feels. Joe’s hands tighten on his skin, and Nicky gasps, breathless. Joe kisses with a single-minded determination, his exploration of Nicky’s mouth the only thing that he is interested in. All of Nicky’s thoughts blank out into heat. 

“I dreamt entire worlds for us,” Nicky murmurs against Joe’s mouth. This will not be as chaste as their first wedding, but Nicky would never change a single thing about it. Their first few years together had been purely in Nicky’s mind. His heart had burned to look at Yusuf with so much want without anyway to do anything about it, “when I did not think it was possible, when I did not know there was a place for two men in love.” 

Joe is making nearly silent sounds. 

Nicky tightens his grip in Joe’s hair until he has a handful of curls, “Every day, you show me that my dream has come to life on Earth, and Yusuf, my hayati,” a dry kiss is smudged to the side of Nicky’s mouth, “my king, my crown, my soul.” 

“You are sweeter than any dream inside of my mind.” 

Nicky’s only impressions of the trip back to their home are Joe’s hands on his hips, Joe’s lips on his neck, the way that Joe’s eyes darken to see him kneeling on the floor in their entry way. This will not be gentle or soft, Nicky knows. His hands are trembling too much as he pulls Joe out of his swimming shorts. Joe’s hand is demanding in the longer hair near the back of his head. Their front door has barely shut behind them, and Nicky is leaning forward, bracing on Joe’s thighs, his lips meeting the head of Joe’s interested cock. 

In the first few years of their relationship, Nicky had been offended for his own god when he thought of this, of putting Joe’s cock in his mouth, of the sounds that Joe makes, as praying. There is no residual guilt now. There is just the heavy, salty weight of Joe in his mouth, and the drag of his tongue over the bottom of Joe’s cock until he starts to move his hips without thought. Nicky’s fingers tighten on Joe’s thighs as he begins to thrust. Moaning, flushed on his chest and neck, Nicky lets Joe work him over. The feeling of Joe in his mouth always makes Nicky feel like he has been claimed, been taken, been made holy. His mind quiets to the sound of Joe’s moans, how Joe feels out the hinge of his jaw when Nicky suckles on the head of his cock. Pressure is building in the pit of his stomach as he watches Joe’s chest heave. Nicky is not thinking when he puts his own hand on his cock. He is wet at the tip, drooling. 

“Bello amore mio,” Joe pulls out of his mouth, “Nicolo.” 

Nicky feels like he is blinking into the light when he meets Joe’s eyes, “Yusuf.” 

His lips are reddened, smudged, and his eyes are watery with the aftereffects of Joe’s cock. Heart beating in his throat, hand still working on his own cock, Nicky tilts his forehead to rest on Joe’s thigh. It is too much. His legs are tensing, hand working faster, when Joe lifts him into his arms. There is a singular second when Nicky puts his hands on Joe’s shoulders to steady himself, where Joe has enough time to grab his cock, “You are beautiful when you touch yourself.” 

Nails biting into Joe’s shoulders, Nicky seeks out his lips. Joe stops touching him to wrap a hand around his thigh, to leverage Nicky into a better position for his fingers. The lost, wavering sound that Nicky makes at the loss of feeling on his cock is swallowed by Joe’s slick tongue parting his lips. Teasing will not work today, Nicky thinks desperately, a hand on Joe’s chest. He will combust. Nicky feels empty, urgent, but Joe is kissing him more slowly, a hand on his jaw to steer him into the press of chaste kisses. He is smiling, Nicky knows. The crinkles near his eyes only confirm this as Nicky touches his cheeks. They are lost to it, smiling at each other, when Nicky feels what he wants. Joe’s fingers are gentle, exploratory as they navigate the ridges of his hip bones, his lower spine, and finally, where Nicky wants him. 

“We don’t have lube,” Joe whispers against Nicky’s cheek. He has left a trail of kisses from Nicky’s mouth to his ear. The scratchy feeling of his beard against Nicky’s skin as his fingers rub over Nicky’s dry hole makes him break out into goosebumps, arching up into the heat of Joe’s body. They are not so modern that they have forgotten their days of using olive oil. It is less of a walk, anyway. 

Joe must sense what he is doing, because he holds onto Nicky’s hips as they trip into the kitchen, burying his laughter into the nape of Nicky’s neck. It is good olive oil, Nicky thinks, much less smelly and messy than other options they have had in the past. Dusk sends pastel purple through the glass doors that lead out to their deck, and Joe holds his cock gently as he goes to grab the olive oil. Nicky, smiling, shaking his head, settles onto the kitchen table to watch the play of muscles in his shoulders and his thighs. He is an Adonis. He makes Nicky’s mouth water. 

“Andiamo, Yusuf,” Nicky says, as Joe turns back to him holding the olive oil. Knowing what Joe likes, Nicky leans back onto his hands, spreading his legs enough to make room for his slim hips and wide shoulders, “I will have to touch myself.” His mouth quirks into a half smile as he runs his own hand down his chest, teasing. 

“Nicolo,” Joe does not need to be told twice. He is wrapped up in Nicky’s legs before Nicky has finished laughing, his lips tracing up Nicky’s exposed throat, “I would not be able to look away from you.” 

They smile at each other until Joe has slicked a finger up and is sliding it into Nicky. Joe has smart fingers, fast fingers, wicked fingers. It is always like this: Joe’s mouth on his neck while Nicky whines and begs, his Italian becoming increasingly fevered. Joe does not waste time with slow; he checks that Nicky is okay, and then he is adding another finger, spreading them. Nicky falls back on the table, Joe’s mouth moving down his chest. There is nothing to hold onto while Joe bites his nipples, while he gets goosebumps on his thighs, while he tries to breathe, so he grabs onto the other side of the table, arms above his head. Nicky’s eyes fall closed as Joe adds a third finger. He will die on this table, hard and bucking into Joe’s mouth. Suddenly, all of that stops.

Joe, looking at him from his hip bone, smiles, “La mia musa, I would draw you like this.” 

Blinking into the light, Nicky kicks at Joe’s strong back. Between them, his cock is wet at the tip, and he can see Joe’s thick cock, reddened and leaking. His body is still a livewire, an exposed fuse. Joe is like this for at least a week after they get married again. 

“After you make love to me,” Nicky touches himself: his chest, his hips, the fading red marks from Joe’s mouth, “per favore.”

“Amore mio,” Joe stands, finally, finally, sliding himself into Nicky’s open body. The feeling of fullness, warm and caught as Joe lifts his legs to place them on his chest, sends Nicky into a tailspin. His head tilts back, his mouth opening in a sound that is more air than actual sound, “You know that I will take care of you.” 

Before Joe, Nicky had only had religion to compare this to. It is communion and divinity, their love made tangible. It is the force of creation moving between them: Joe’s powerful hips, his strong hands on Nicky’s cock and leg, the way his teeth bite into Nicky’s ankle skin in a way that shoots sparks up his spine. It is transubstantiation: love made physical, love made vocal, love given sunshine and warmth. Nicky arches his back when Joe angles his hips up. His hands are too tight on the table, but he can’t loosen them. He can’t stop saying it, can’t stop shaping the words, “Joe, madre di dio, madonna benedetta” to the sounds of Joe’s repeated “hayati, habibi, oh my god, oh my god.” 

The first time Joe had been between Nicky’s legs, Nicky had been skeptical, worried that it couldn’t possibly live up to his expectations. Now, after all of this time, Nicky sits up and pulls Joe in tighter until he can barely move his hips, until it is just them biting each other’s lips as they each move towards their climax. Now, it is a blessing to pull Joe’s curls as his head falls back, his throat working over the word, “hayati,” over and over as they come together. It is forgiveness, really, to kiss Joe’s bearded chin and his bitten lips and the apples of his cheeks and whisper, “You take such good care of me, my heart.” 

*** 

Nicky opens all of the windows in their bathroom one by one as hot water rushes into the tub. The old hinges let out occasional groans, and some of them stick fiercely, but the brisk morning air sharpens Nicky’s senses. He can feel the locked, full feeling in his chest receding. This morning, he’d woken up with his heart lodged in his throat for no reason that he could clearly discern. They’d found Nile. Booker was exiled. Andy was as safe as she could be. It is like catching the red dot of a gun’s aim suddenly over your heart; he forgets the feeling, and then he is back in it. Mindful of the bubbles building in the tub, Nicky slips the sweatpants he’s wearing off and folds them over the chair they keep in the corner. 

The steam smells of lavender as Nicky sinks into the too hot water. Morning air turned sharp with the imminent arrival of fall filtering in through the windows while their white gauze curtains billow is a frivolous pleasure in most parts of their life. Even the bath salts, an indulgence Joe put into his suitcase, are not part of Nicky’s normal life. Only in Malta does Nicky dare close his eyes to duck his head under the water. Submerged, there are no sounds: only the steady drum beat of his heart, the aquatic bubbling of his hands moving, and the thunderous roar of the water before he turns it off with his foot. The epsom salt sings through him; relaxing, his muscles loosening. If Nicky was asked what peace feels like, it would be something a lot like this. In the water, Nicky couldn’t touch his problems even if he stretched his fingers out as far as they went. 

Nicky resurfaces only enough for his nose and eyes to be above the water line. Their burner phone vibrated once on his bedside table this morning. The text had been from A. It had read, quite simply, B is in Paris. Nicky hadn’t felt a singular ounce of surprise or fear or anger. The world continued spinning past all of their families, all of their known places, all of their known quantities, until the only real thing left was Andromache’s face in the mornings and the vibrations of a scythe crashing into the sword in your arms. Nicky and Joe had had it easy, in this respect. As the world turned, they’d clung to each other. Genoa got bigger, brighter, louder, and churches became spectacles, mass went on TV, and still, beside him, was Joe’s crinkly-eyed smile and the constellation of freckles low on his stomach. Fear had crested and broken in Nicky’s chest at least once a year for a long time. Beside him with a gun or an axe, soot or dirt smudged across his forehead, a silver ring on his finger, was his husband. 

Because it was too soon, because Joe has a fighter’s stubborn memory for pain, Nicky did not try to tell Joe that eternity may look unbearable with no one beside you. Paris, then, is of course where Booker would go. As much as the world speeds, Paris rises like a beacon: brilliant, fast, artistic, a cradle where all historical things eventually nestle together, anonymous. Booker’s entire life was in France. If Nicky was exiled, he would likely go back to Genoa. There is something magnetic about the pull of home, however much the details fade from one’s mind. Nicky closes his eyes again. He is not mad. He wishes only for Booker’s health, his safety. They are a family. 

When the water has begun to build in his ears, Nicky stretches his long arms towards the ceiling to propel himself up. A series of pops and pulls make him moan -- between Joe’s sex drive and holding heavy weapons all of the time, his back and shoulders are always carrying the ghost of a remembered pain. After his stretch, Nicky cannot resist the impulse to fold himself in half: resting his cheek on his knees, back settled against the cold porcelain as a breathless counterpoint to the warmth of the water. Everything is so syrup slow when he takes a bath, even the act of taking a deep breath is more fulfilling than usual. Blinking heavily in the rising steam, Nicky turns his head to face the door. 

Standing there, arms crossed over his strong chest, a shirt gaping off his shoulder, Joe leans against the doorjamb. 

Voice low enough to preserve the peace in the room, Nicky murmurs, “Amore mio.” 

Joe looks at Nicky with his head against the door jamb, a thumb working over his own lower lip. He is quiet, contemplative, as his eyes sweep down the sensitive nape of Nicky’s neck and the long line of his bare spine. Nicky knows, without having to ask, that Joe is thinking of how they made love last night; as simple as breathing, Joe between his legs, in his heart, in his head, too much, always underpinned with declarations of impossible, forever love. When Joe speaks, his voice breaks, “Hanak al-kathir munkim fe kalabi.” (There is so much of you in my heart.) 

Nicky closes his eyes. 

“Ant kalabi.” (You are my heart.)

Footsteps are Nicky’s only indication that Joe has entered the bathroom. It does not take long for Nicky to smell him: his citrus aftershave and the musky scent of them, left on their sheets. Nicky trusts Joe with everything that he is, so he does not open his eyes. Whatever Joe wants, however he wants it, Nicky will give it to him. Nicky does not have to wait for long. Joe’s lips start on his forehead, kissing across until he can place a smaller, laughing kiss against a faint sunspot that Nicky has always had. Then, Joe’s mouth moves down his nose: it is a Roman nose, a proud nose, and Nicky smiles at the way Joe’s lips feel against the tip. Nicky does not let him go any further. 

Greedy, skin hot from the bath, Nicky wraps his arms around Joe’s neck to draw him into a series of short, solid kisses. Joe will grumble about being wet, Nicky thinks. Maybe it is because they are fresh from a wedding or because Nicky knows they will have to talk about Booker. Whatever it is, Nicky scratches his nails across Joe’s shoulder just to hear him groan. Urgently, wide, rough hands find Nicky’s bum and the center of his back. Their chaste kisses turn into something wet and hungry, the kind of kissing that inevitably leads to Nicky on his knees or on his back. Joe’s nails bite into his bum as Nicky feels the realization build in his chest: Joe has seen the message.

Drawing back with a hand on Joe’s chin, Nicky murmurs, “My love, I am safe in your arms.” 

Joe’s eyes fall closed as his hands tighten around Nicky’s waist. 

“Yusuf,” Nicky’s hands look so large on Joe’s face, cradling his cheekbones, “He is our family.” 

“Rohi--” Joe begins. His forehead has pulled into deep furrows. 

Quieting him with a chaste kiss, Nicky stays there as he begins to speak. This opportunity will leave, if Nicky does not take it now. Joe is pliant and warm, because they got married yesterday, because he loves Nicky, “He is our family, hayati. We do not know three hundred years alone,” Nicky touches his eyelids, the dark fan of his eyelashes, “We do not live with half a heart.” 

Joe’s furrowed forehead relaxes slightly under Nicky’s fingers. 

“We are home, we are whole,” Joe’s mouth is closed while he breathes evenly. Nicky still presses a kiss there, “Forgive him, la mia anima.” 

For a long time, Joe’s hands curl and uncurl around Nicky’s back in silence. Nicky has been inspected by Joe; every time they have made love, Joe has been thorough in making sure that Nicky is fully in one piece. It is a habit that has survived nearly a thousand years at the tips of Joe’s fingers. Nicky used to do it mostly to humor him. Now, after Andy, there is something vital about the careful care with which Joe looks at his body. There were days when Nicky did not leave his knees, praying for a blessing in his life, praying for a sign that he was doing the right thing. He is the only person on the Earth to have Joe. The pleasure of having Joe for nine hundred plus years is the blessing that Nicky waited and wanted for. Nicky tucks his face into Joe’s neck while he waits. The path to forgiveness is not clear, even after so long. Nicky knows this. His hands move up and into Joe’s hair. 

Joe finally pulls back after a time that Nicky has measured in the drumbeats of their hearts against each other. His eyes are dark as they take in Nicky’s flushed skin and wet torso, “You are my better self.” 

Nicky begins to object before Joe’s mouth touches his, brief and soft. 

“I cannot forget you strapped to that table,” Joe’s hand fits to his cheek, “I will never forget the anger I felt.”

Nicky covers Joe’s hand with his own, “We have done all that we could, Yusuf. The rest is too heavy to carry.” 

Unwillingly, Joe’s lips quirk into a barely there twist of a half-smile, “Where will I put it down, Nicolo?” 

It is an honest question, and something that even Nicky wonders about in his more bleak moments. Where can they leave things when they are rootless, for the most part? When they are supposed to make no ripples in the larger pond of world history? Nicky carries things in his body: in his hands, he hefts the knowledge and exact measurements of his shooting; in his shoulders, he holds the summers he spent on the water and the way fish run on the end of a line; in his hips and thighs, he cherishes Yusuf for all of time. Bad things are harder to put down. His last seriously hard memories were left in Genoa, in the church. 

Nicky says, “I give them to God,” because he does not have a better or easier answer. 

Joe leans up to rest his lips against Nicky’s forehead. He is not kissing so much as breathing, in and out, holding Nicky still with hands on his hips. Being held like this, out of the water, raises goosebumps on Nicky’s skin. Cold rivulets trace down his nose and forehead as he waits for Joe to decide what he will do. 

“I will be in the garden, caro mio,” Joe eventually whispers. 

Nicky does not try to hold onto him. The garden is where Joe goes when he needs to think, when he wants to be alone with all of the things that are always racing in his mind. Nine hundred years creates a kind of organizational chaos in your head, Nicky thinks. There are always memories, always experiences, always people surfacing for air. Sometimes, the only possible thing to do is to just sit down and let it happen. Sinking back into the water, Nicky discovers that it has gone a bit tepid while Joe was talking. He raises a foot to the hot water tap, reclining as his feet are enveloped in a pocket of warmth. Joe will come around. His heart is too full to hold anger. The only reason he is being so tight-fisted about this is because Nicky was dragged into it, and Nicky understands that anger, but Booker is right too: everything you know and love dies. Eventually, permanent death is the only way out. 

Tilting his head back onto the rim of the tub, Nicky thinks of his mother again. There are still days when he aches to ask her what to do, what to say. About Booker, she would likely side more closely with Joe. She would love Joe, he thinks, even though she could never possibly understand what he is or the love he has for the impossibly courageous man he has married so many different times. Nicky closes his eyes to bring her fierce, warm smile to the surface of his mind. He misses her today. 

*** 

For dinner, Nicky makes troccoli pasta with a basil pesto. Their kitchen is luminous, suffused with a warm, golden light, as Nicky hums old songs under his breath. Malta has made him wistful and introspective, especially after their last mission. They came so close to the edge. Backpedaling has taken a lot from him and Joe. The well-worn motions of making pasta have never failed to soothe him; this time is no different. It is like a song that he knows every verse to: cracking eggs into the bowl of flour, beating them with a fork before beginning to mix everything together, then kneading. All of it, Nicky could do without his sight. His mind wanders while he kneads. Joe had been in the garden until Nicky got out of his bath. Nicky had been shrugging on a too big black sweater, definitely Joe’s, when Joe had pressed a kiss to his mouth and said that he was going to the mosque. Before Joe had gone out the door, Nicky had touched his hip. He didn’t need to say it out loud; Joe knew that he loved him. 

Nicky opens a bottle of white wine as the sun begins to sink below the horizon. Dry, white wine burns pleasantly down his throat, not nearly as much as a red, as Nicky begins to cut the cantaloupe that they bought at the market. It is so fragrant: almost sickly sweet, wet all over his fingers. He cannot resist putting a piece into his mouth. Nicky swallows the urge to moan. It is perfect, cold, refreshing on his palette. When it has all been cut, he wraps each melon slice in a silky, fatty piece of prosciutto. Their meal will be light and fresh; a sweet, summer meal before they are plunged back into fall. 

When everything has been prepared, Nicky begins to search for candles. It is one of their more antiquated traditions, maybe. After each of their weddings, after the feasting, after the merriment, they always sit down to a meal by candlelight. Joe started it in Barcelona. They had been tired, heart sick, and newly married in a place that was not prepared to accept them. Nicky remembers these meals as small happinesses; always, Joe’s smile, his eyes, the musculature of his arms and chest, the way he says the softest, loveliest things in the strongest voice so that Nicky doesn’t miss a word. Modern electricity is nice, Nicky thinks as he reaches into the top of the closet for the basket of candles they keep there, but lights fail to capture the way that the bottom of Joe’s eyes turn golden in flame or the way that their wedding rings throw faint, glittering shapes onto the walls. He sets them on counters around the kitchen. They throw dots of light, like distant galaxies, against the walls. 

The table is set with their mismatched plates. Tall, glittering wine glasses stand sentinel in the sea of candlelight. The pesto is green as palm fronds, fragrant and nutty, alongside the orange melon. With the doors to the backyard open, the smell of the sea and the sweetness of almost-fall permeates the kitchen. Nina Simone croons, low, almost indistinguishable from the outside. It is perfect, Nicky thinks as he self-consciously pushes hair back from his forehead. He has been unable to think of anything other than Joe, throughout the entire meal preparation: Joe’s strong, broad back bent as he prayed, his calloused hands clasped, the delicate nape of his neck as he bowed again and again. Nicky can hear the way that his voice cracks with emotion when he is in a mosque, the way that he refuses to pray with anything less than absolute conviction. His belief is one of the things that Nicky loves best about him. 

“Nicolo?” 

“Hayati,” Nicky turns, the apples of his cheeks flushed pink. He’s missed the man who stands in the doorway with a soft smile on his face and a twinkle in his dark eyes. The white shirt that Joe is wearing makes him look tanner, makes his hair look darker. He is haloed by the night outside of their front door. He is beautiful. 

“Tu sei tutto,” Joe whispers. 

It is not true. Joe is what holds all of Nicky’s life in orbit, the secret to eternity. As Nicky thinks this, he feels how empty his arms have been all day. They are still too far apart. 

“Vieni qua, l’amore di tutte le mie vite.” 

Joe is in his arms before Nicky can say anything else, lifting him by the hinges of his jaw into a sweet, dry kiss. Even this, a mere suggestion of their lips touching, gives Nicky goosebumps. Shuddering closer into Joe’s hold, Nicky buries his face in Joe’s neck, his arms tight around Joe’s center as Joe’s thumbs soothe back and forth over his cheeks. Words do not come close to what Nicky feels for this man, but love builds in his throat. He will never leave, will never want anyone else, will never see anyone else so clearly. 

Dinner lasts only as long as Nicky can resist the long line of Joe’s throat as he drinks white wine. Nicky is helpless to Joe in a white shirt, his biceps and pecs stretching the fabric just enough to be visible, his warm chest peeking between the buttons that he has undone after being in the mosque all day. In the moments before he sets down his wine, Nicky thinks that he will burst into flames if he does not touch Joe. Joe smirks, his head tilted to the side in a way that says he knows.

Because they have spent nine hundred years tuned to the same frequency, Joe’s arms are open as soon as Nicky makes the decision to go to him. The table cuts into the middle of his lower back. His sleeves swallow his hands. He is trembling from Joe, from the force of what he feels. Always as gently as the first time, Joe whispers, “What do you need, amore mio?” with a hand on his face. 

Nicky has had nine hundred years to put words to the things that he wants from Joe. First, there were no words for it. Nicky hadn’t known what to ask for, what to need or want. He’d only known the silence of himself panting, Joe’s hands all over him as he’d tried to block out God and history and Andromache and just feel. Then, it was an animal thing, their hunger: I want you to fuck me whispered so quietly it was a part of the night. As the hunger fled, electricity sizzled in its wake: Make love to me murmured into the place under Joe’s ear in a voice that broke more often than not. The electricity has never fled or cooled. Nicky still feels like he is touching an exposed wire. Now, Joe’s curls slide through his fingers, his strong neck bending to allow Nicky’s big hands more room, and language fails him. There are no words for something as big as this. 

Nicky is looking at Joe’s mouth, at his big hands as they encircle his waist, “Always you.” 

Joe’s hands find their way under Nicky’s sweater. His hips and stomach warm at the press of Joe’s palms. Goosebumps bloom as Joe moves his hands up higher, taking his sweater with them. Nicky reaches his arms up to help. There is something beyond language about being in Joe’s lap without clothes on while Joe kisses his neck and shoulders. Nicky can feel his cock. 

It is always a shame to not touch Joe when he is smiling, his hands on Nicky’s bum. Nicky does not miss opportunities. Not with a gun, and not with his hands. Joe’s chest is broad and powerful, warm and faintly dark haired under Nicky’s mouth. His hands stay on Nicky’s bum, as he tilts his head back, a moan on his lips. He is beautiful, Nicky knows. The exquisite line of his throat tastes of lemon and white wine, the dimples hiding under his beard that Nicky kisses, because he loves them. Nicky hands find the button on his jeans as his mouth finds Joe’s. 

“Voglio toccarti,” Nicky whispers into their kiss. This, at least, is not beyond language: the pressure of Joe’s hands as he slips them under Nicky’s jeans, as he palms Nicky’s bum. Joe uses the leverage to lift Nicky into a better position for his mouth, for his clever, quicksilver tongue. The kissing makes Nicky lose concentration, makes his hands fumble with Joe’s jeans. He laughs, breathless, into the heat of Joe’s teeth on his lower lip. 

Joe is much more focused. Nicky whimpers, high in the back of his throat, when Joe’s knuckles brush against his cock. They kiss without finesse: panting into each other’s mouths, Nicky’s entire body alight with the slow drag of Joe’s hand over him. Fervent, urgent, Nicky pulls at his button and zipper, works until he can feel Joe’s cock too, hot and thick in his hands. 

There are no more words after that: just his hands wrapped around both of their cocks, slick with olive oil. Joe’s hands stay on his bum, grab handfuls that expose him, grab handfuls that make him whimper into their kisses. Language does not cover the feeling of Joe’s cock against his: the heat, the slide, the way he whines when Nicky dips a thumb into his slit. They rock together, the sea in the distance, Nicky’s mouth torn between Joe’s lips and his neck. Then, again, language fails: there is only Joe’s head tipped back as he comes, his deep brown eyes opening to look hazily at Nicky, his mouth on Nicky’s earlobe and neck. The dry finger he rubs over Nicky’s hole when he whispers, “Come, Nicolo.” 

*** 

On the fifth day, they go back to London. 

Closing up their home is bittersweet. Something always comes loose in Nicky’s chest when he locks the doors into their backyard. This is them, this is their place, their happiness. Their black backpacks rest together in the kitchen while Joe makes sure the bathroom and bedroom windows are locked. Nicky rests his head against the glass. He wishes they had longer here, always. Sometimes, he tries to tell himself that he would treasure their time here less, if they had more. Nicky knows that he is lying to himself. It is only the thought of Andy and Nile waiting, likely sparring in the backyard of the safe house, or Andy teaching Russian that lifts his lips. Seeing Andy is always good for his heart. 

Joe comes out of the backroom in the same black sweater that Nicky was wearing yesterday, his boots tied, a baseball cap backwards over his distinct curls. Nicky’s chosen dark jeans and a burgundy sweater for the flight home. It is Joe’s, because the smell of coffee and charcoal lives in the bands of fabric around the wrists. They will wear their rings until the next mission. Hopefully, it won’t be raining in London. 

For a moment, caught against the sherbet dawn backdrop, Joe just looks at him. His dark eyes pass over Nicky’s eyes and his mouth before settling on his worn shoes, “Nicolo.” 

Nicky smiles, faintly at first, until he is blushing, “They are comfortable.” 

“You look like a tourist,” Joe is laughing though, head tipped back, a hand over his eyes. 

The Birkenstocks do not often venture outside of Malta. Andy professes her undying hatred for them every time she sees them. Nicky has caught her wearing them with thick black socks when she does not think that they are awake. Joe complains, but his eyes keep returning to Nicky’s cuffed jeans, his ankles. Nile wore a pair out in London when they went to Boots. She will understand. 

Smiling, Joe hefts both of their backpacks over his shoulders. They’ve tucked a piece of baklava in one for Andy, and a cheesy Malta tourist tee shirt into another for Nile. Nicky misses Booker. As he leaves their house, locking up behind them, Nicky sends a prayer to God: protect him, Nicky thinks. Keep him safe. Return him to us whole. 

When he turns around, Joe is holding out a hand. 

“My university student boyfriend and I, returning from holidays,” he says with a crooked grin. 

Nicky shakes his head, but he cannot stop smiling. It is the magic of Malta, the magic of Joe. They will return to their family, happy, and Nicky can’t think of anything better than that. Smiling, he presses a kiss to the back of Joe’s hand. They are whole again.


End file.
